Home / News / You get another chance to decide how to spend your tax dollars; Participatory Budgeting meeting this Monday

You get another chance to decide how to spend your tax dollars; Participatory Budgeting meeting this Monday

November 18, 2016

Dear Neighbor,

How often do the taxpayers themselves decide how to spend their tax dollars? The truth is not at all, except in the 49th Ward and a growing number of other jurisdictions that have adopted Participatory Budgeting, where the taxpayers vote directly on how to spend a portion of a government budget.

Join me at one of the upcoming Participatory Budgeting Neighborhood Assemblies where you and your neighbors will begin the process of determining how to spend $1 million of the ward’s capital improvement budget for things such as new streets, alleys, sidewalks, playgrounds, bicycle routes and the like.

The next Neighborhood Assembly will be held Monday, November 21st, at the Loyola Park Fieldhouse, 1230 W. Greenleaf (at the Lake), pizza courtesy of J.B. Alberto’s Pizza, will be served at 6:30 p.m. and the meeting will start promptly at 7:00 p.m.

If you can’t make tomorrow night’s meeting, two other English language Neighborhood Assemblies and one in Spanish will be coming up in the next few weeks (see schedule below). You need attend only one of the meetings and you can go to any meeting in the ward.

We had two great neighborhood assemblies last week. Forty-ninth ward residents are clearly hungering to participate in something positive after last weeks disappointing election results. Nearly half the meeting attendees volunteered to serve as “community representatives,” who will work over the next several months to turn the ideas collected at the assemblies for how to spend the Ward’s capital improvement fund into final ballot proposals that will be presented to the voters next spring.

You can be involved as much or as little as your schedule permits, but get involved. Be a part of this history-making democratic process!

Below is the schedule for the remaining Neighborhood Assemblies:

UPCOMING NEIGHBORHOOD ASSEMBLIES

(Note: Complimentary pizza will be provided at 6:30 p.m. before all evening meetings and donuts and coffee will be provided at 9:30 a.m. before the Saturday, Nov. 21st, morning meeting.)